AMPHIPOLIS TOMB AND ASTRONOMY
By Lefteris Kaliambos T.E Institute of Larissa Greece October 2014 The Amphipolis Tomb (Greek: Τύμβος Αμφίπολης), is an ancient Macedonian tomb discovered in Amphipolis, Central Macedonia, in northern Greece in 2012 and first entered in August 2014. According to preliminary findings by archeologists, Dinocrates of Rhodes may have been the architect . In response to the magnitude of the finds, the authorities of Central Macedonia have requested and were granted heavy 24-hour police guard of the dig site and have also begun the necessary procedures for the inclusion of the Amphipolis Tomb in UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites as a "top priority". This monument is very important for the progress of science, because I discovered that it includes in its circular base mathematical relationships like the stade or stadion used as a unit length of the Hellenistic period (1 stade = 157.5 meters). It was used also in astronomy by the Greek astronomer Eratosthenes, (276 BC-195 BC) who measured the perimeter of our Earth. According to the archeologists for the construction of the surrounding wall of the circular base, 2500 cubic meters of marble were mined. The thousands of tons of marble mining, sculpting, polishing, transporting everything by ship, workers and artists who required a huge amount of money. It gives the impression that it is a truncated cone pyramid with a top the Lion of Amphipolis. The shape of the base is a perfect circle with well-groomed approximated curved cubes. The perimeter of the base measured outside the curved cubes is 497 meters and 3 meters in height, but measuring the circle of the surrounding wall by using the medium line of the mean width of the wall we find a perimeter of 494.8 m which gives the diameter (d) of the circular base as d = 494.8/π = 494.8/3.1416 = 157.5 meters Surprisingly I discovered that this length is equal to the 1 stade or 1 stadion (St) of the Hellenistic period. ( 1 St = 157.5 m). Also comparing this size of one stade with the same size of one stade of the well known monumental funeral Pyre for Hephaestion we conclude that this comparison supports the idea that the Amphipolis tomb was designed by Dinocrates. It is well known that Dinocrates was architect and technical adviser for Alexander the Great. He is known for his plan for the city of Alexandria in Egypt, the monumental funeral Pyre for Hephaestion (general of Alexander), the reconstruction of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, as well as other works . According to the history of Greek people ( Ekdotike Athenon, Volume Δ , page 208) Alexander the Great after the death of Hephaestion (324 B C) ordered his architect Dinocrates to plan an elaborate funeral for Hephaestion, called Pyre, having a base at a size being a stade in length. Its cost is variously given in the sources as 12,000 talents. Today after my discovery that the diameter of the base of the Amphipolis tomb is one stade of 157.5 meters one concludes that Dinocrates always used the stade of the Hellenistic period. Several years after the death of Hephaestion Eratosthenes (250 BC) calculated the circumference of the Earth in Alexandria by using the stade of the hellenistic period . Eratosthenes knew that at local noon on the summer solstice in the Ancient Egyptian city of Swenet (known in ancient Greek as Syene, and now as Aswan) on the Tropic of Cancer, the Sun would appear at the zenith, directly overhead. He knew this because he had been told that the shadow of someone looking down a deep well in Syene would block the reflection of the Sun at noon off the water at the bottom of the well. Using a gnomon, he measured the Sun's angle of elevation at noon on the solstice in Alexandria, and found it to be (7°12') south of the zenith. Assuming that the Earth was spherical (360°), and that Alexandria was due north of Syene, he concluded that the meridian arc distance from Alexandria to Syene must therefore be 1/50th of a circle's circumference, or 7°12'/360°. His knowledge of the size of Egypt was founded on the work of many generations of surveying trips. This distance was corroborated by inquiring about the time that it took to travel from Syene to Alexandria by camel. He rounded the result to a final value of 700 stadia per degree, which implies a circumference (P) of 252,000 stadia. Eratosthenes used the stade of the Hellenistic period of 157.5 meters, which would imply a circumference of 39,690 km. That is P = 252,000 St X 157.5 m = 39,690,000 m = 39,690 Km This value is close to the correct value since the perimeter of the earth is 40.075 Km or 254,444 stadia. In other words the periphery of the Earth is 254,444 times the diameter ( d) of the circular base of the Amphipolis tomb, which is the only one monument of the Hellenistic period telling us that the mathematicians of that period used the Hellenistic stade ( 1 St = 157.5 meters). However some astronomers claim that Eratosthenes used the 185 meter Attic stade which could imply a circumference of 46,620 km, an error of 16.3%. Under this confusion and taking into account that the architect Denocrates used the stade of the Hellenistic period I cleared that Eratosthenes used the well-known stade of the Hellenistic period as a common unit length for the journey. In my book COSMOGONY (2012) which is in the library of Larissa I pointed out that the measurement of the diameter D of our Earth by Eratosthenes opened new horizons for the astronomy. So Greek mathematician and astronomer Aristarchus o Samos ( 310 BC-230 BC) under the measurement of the diameter D of the Earth found that the Sun is greater than the Earth. So Aristarchus developed the heliocentric system by saying that the Earth moves around the Sun because it is smaller than it. The heliocentric system was successfully revived by Copernicus, after which Johannes Kepler described planetary motions with greater accuracy, with Kepler's laws, and Isaac Newton gave a correct explanation based on laws of gravitational attraction and dynamics. Particularly after many centuries (1687) Newton based on the heliocentric system discovered the law of universal gravity according to which a gravitational force acting at a distance is equal to the inertial force due to the orbital velocity of the Earth measured always with respect to the Sun. However later (in 1905 and 1916) Einstein’s contradicting theories of relativity led to serious complications because he believed incorrectly that the Earth and the Sun are equivalent systems. For example Einstein in chapter GENERAL RELATIVITY (page 22) of his book “The evolution of physics” (1938) wrote the following wrong paragraph: “Take two bodies, the sun and the earth, for instance. The motion we observe is again relative. It can be described by connecting the c. s. with either the earth or the sun”. In fact, always the Earth moves with respect to the Sun, no matter what is the motion of the Sun in our galaxy. (See my RELATIVITY OF LAWS ). Einstein also believed incorrectly that a moving observer with an electron in an accelerator is able to measure a hypothetical increase of mass of the stationary objects in the laboratory. Of course such a fallacious relativity did much to retard the progress of science. Category:Fundamental physics concepts